Preview in After Effects doesn't work

[miah27136225]

Hi!

I am working on a project in After Effects and all of a sudden the preview stopped working. I push play and the active camera starts but nothing happends. I have tried to start a new project but I have the same issue. Does anyone have any idea what could be wrong?

/Mia

[mehmetk3914645]

Also try turning on "cache before playback".

[Albert5ED8]

Restart Ae helped to solve the problem but this happen again and again everytime I working on timelime. So disappointed.

[lacey5E86]

heyy! i had this problem just now and i was checking the replys but NOTHING worked:( and i found out how to do it myself! press preview on the right side of your screen and there will be a place where it has icons, one will be an eye. press it and then it should work!

[amandainnis]

Thank you!  this helped me.  I have been pulling out my hair and all along it was the little eye icon!

[Jazmyn5FC3]

WHAT A GODSEND YOU ARE, THANK YOU.

See I just got AE today and I made my first edit on there and I was getting so frustrated when my videos didn't play with the music! All I had to do was click the eye!

[togotooner]

Amazing! I spent one hour on this and then I click the eye icon and its fixed. Are you kidding me?????? Unbelievable. Why on earth would you even have that option for the preview? Geesh! Thanks for the life saving tip!

[default5h6aohhgby5z]

Well sometimes someone might want to just listen to the sound without watching the video... or have a look on guides and controls without video.

But anyways: For me it doesn't solve the problem, Adobe!
My cached playback won't play, no matter what i do. I have 100 GB RAM headroom, still nothing. Spacebar or klicking the button: Nothing. Purging RAM and Cache: Still nothing.
There is literally only one way to solve it. Quit After Effects and re-open it. What kind of a workflow is that? I have to do it about every 5-10 minutes. Pretty much thinking about quitting AE forever. What a mess.

[aaronb1963]

Thank you very much. This helped me immensely. 

[ChetanR]

This is soo freaking annoying. I've tried every possible solution available on the internet but nothing works. I've re-installed the software thrice now. This is just ridiculous, really disappointed with Adobe. They are just not bothered to solve such a small issue.

[GorkEnterprises]

Found a Fix for me....  July 2022 and it's still having the same issue.. only 4 frames preview.. tried everything everyone suggested.. nothing worked for me.. nope nothing,, And as a power user of AE since it was in Beta.. I tried it all, but I noticed it just started happening today.. So the only thing i hadn't tried was the Disc Cache.. I switched it off.. and nothing, but when I relaunched the app.. BOOM it worked.. wow.. like magic.. Then to check it further, I switched the Disc Cache back on and it still works... so it would seem that something I did caused this to trigger.. I simply copied a precomp from one comp to a new one and that instantly started the 4 frame issue.. So it was a complex comp that I added so I figured I broke something someplace.. Although it was just a comp that was like 400x640 it was just a still frame that had been cut into separate pieces and layers to reveal it.. nothing major, but that caused some bug to trigger..  

Hope this helps folks.. I was already looking up Nuke and Affinity apps and ready to dump my subscription.. probably what I will do.. Nodal based compositing is really the best and most efficiant way to composite. If I were a stock investor.. (which I am) I might consider that users will finally start dumping there 10 year subscriptions of Adobe and moving into the future and leaving Adobe back in the past... (where it belongs?).. I was a loyal customer for decades.. starting in Photoshop 1.0 and using AE when it was in Beta before Adobe purchased it. it's been a long ride Adobe.. remember Aldus? I was there for it all.. 

[slovill]

I ran into a similar issue tonight, but for a different reason and wanted to share my solution. In my case I had precomposed a clip too add a warp stabilzer effect to it. After some work, the footage in the precomp had a warp stabilizater effect, and the precomp as a layer in the original comp also had a warp stabilizer effect, but it was turned off. The on/off toggle made no difference because there was still some sort of recursive created that must've just slammed RAM, thank you ma'am. So if the issue shows up suddenly, in the middle of your work, look for a recursive like this.